Haze
by Angeliz
Summary: Jack's been having strange dreams...
1. Chapter 1

It has been years—decades—since Jack last really slept, given the whole not-human thing. So when he wakes in North's windowsill with his cheek mashed against the pane, back cracking as though he's been curled up for hours, it takes him a second to put it together. Sleep? _Him?_ It's a weird combination. The last thing he remembers is chatting with Sandy—or whatever you'd call it, what with the muteness—and now here he is, hours later, by the looks of things. Jack stretches his arms up over his head, spine popping like candy as he rocks onto his toes.

Something clicks mid-stretch, a few beats late, as wires connect in his faulty memory. There's a strange, buoyant quality to the recall, like he's not really sure if it happened or not. _A dream_, supplies his distant humanity, he's remembering a dream, fleeting and fractured. Jack mentally flails to grasp at its threads, curiosity piqued by the novelty of it all. Leaning his weight against his grip on his staff, Jack scrunches his eyes shut and waits for it to strike.

And oh, does it strike. He nearly falls on his face.

It comes back in flashes—_bright melts of color, cool green, mossy stone. Springtime at the Warren, and Jack laughing as usual, fingers cupped around one of his snowflakes. Bunny and Jack, meandering through flowers. Bunny grumpy and difficult, like he always is. The snowflake drifting. Sudden closeness, very sudden._

_Very close, actually, is the important part._

_Very._

"Ah! Jeez, what? What the—no! No, no way, that is definitely not a PG rating."Jack scrubs at his hair; his fingers get caught. The staff crackles and skims the floorboards with frost. "I quit. What am I quitting; I don't know, but I quit. Sleeping. No sleeping. Sleeping bad. What the—argh."

Twirling the staff to anchor himself, Jack attempts to untangle his fingers from his hair, makes a frustrated sound, yanks them free with a yelp. He is never, ever sleeping again. He doesn't need sleep. He's a mythical creature.

He grumbles and knocks his head against the wall. "Sleep bad. Sleep very, very bad."


	2. Chapter 2

When next he wakes, he is slumped against a tree, staff propped within his folded hands. Swirls of ice spout from both ends, glazing the grass and the tree bark like pastries. Jack groans, frustrated, staving off a headache, unsuccessfully trying to shake off the memory.

Not this time, apparently. It hits him full-force.

"_Jack and Bunny sitting in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g!"_

_Jack startles and swivels toward the sound, a surprised frown creasing his forehead. Across the ice, Jamie and his friends skate in a circle, little Sophie clapping her hands at their center. Just over her head, Baby Tooth flutters, conducting their song with a tiny baton. As they skate, Jamie looks toward him suddenly, grinning and waving, then pointing wildly. The distraction nearly causes a collision with Cupcake, but at the last moment, he catches his balance and resumes his part in their odd production._

"_Jack and Bunny sitting in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g!"_

_Bewildered, Jack watches them for another long moment—Baby Tooth drops him a wink as he eyes her—then shakes his head and swivels again. He sweeps his gaze along the shore, following the direction of Jamie's grand gestures. A few yards from the pond, an enormous tree pushes skyward, bursting with foliage in deep, layered greens. Jack glides closer, leaning on his staff. Is this what Jamie meant? He can't remember having seen it before._

_The maple seems to go on forever, climbing and climbing toward the clouds. Birds' nests and squirrels pepper its branches, and as Jack glances from one to the next, he finds himself craning his neck outrageously. This tree is huge, unnaturally so. There must be some sort of magic at play—_

_Jack cricks his neck in a mad double-take, his eyes darting toward the rustle of branches. About thirty feet up, Bunny lounges against the trunk, incredibly nonchalant given what he is wearing. The pink lace of his racy lingerie makes his fur stick up against its outline, though he doesn't seem to notice, absorbed in a thorough inspection of his boomerang. Jack stares for much longer than is really appropriate, his jaw hanging open all the while._

"_First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes Bunny with a baby carriage!"_

_Sophie claps from somewhere in their midst, her little-girl voice tinged with laughter. "Kiss-kiss," she adds, "mwah-mwah!"_

"Eyargh!" Jack leaps to his feet, staff twirling for balance. This is so incredibly not okay. For once in his life, he's not seconds from laughing. "I hope those dream-kids didn't believe. If they'd seen him like that, they'd be scarred for life." _But at least I wasn't dressed to match._

Jack fights off a shudder and leaps into the wind. At the back of his mind, he hears Baby Tooth laughing.


End file.
